The present invention relates in general to automatic gain control in radio receivers, and more specifically to variable attenuators using saturable reactors.
Radio receivers employ automatic gain control (AGC) to insure that an amplifier output remains at nearly a constant level in spite of variations in the strength of incoming signals. In a digital signal processing (DSP) receiver that converts an analog radio signal to a digital signal for processing, automatic gain control of the analog signal limits the RF level to the input of an analog-to-digital converter (A/D) to ensure that the dynamic range of the A/D is correctly utilized and to protect the A/D from being damaged by excess voltage levels.